March 2023Painful Endings, Amidst Promising Beginnings
Early March is one of five main hotspots in the year 2022.
(The others are: the first couple weeks of April; the first week of July; the last week of July/ first week of August; and the time around midterm elections in November.)
If you're interested in hearing vedic astrology predictions that address global current events, my teacher, James Kelleher, puts out a yearly World Predictions talk. You can purchase a copy of his four-hour world predictions for 2022 here.
In this newsletter I will address what an Agent of Evolution might be interested in knowing, in helping you show up for the global transformations underway.
Some of the highlights for the month are:
- Democracy vs. Autocracy, collectively and individually
- Hope and inspiration coming from spirit-based sources
- The turning of the karmic wheel: revisiting intergenerational karmas
- Steamrolling the way forward
Democracy vs. Autocracy, collectively and individually
With Venus, Mars, and Pluto conjunct early in the month in Capricorn, we are getting a taste of how we organize to govern ourselves and get vital things accomplished, both collectively and individually. Mars in this position is likely to dominate, as he is organized, efficient, confident, and ambitious. Venus, who wants the peace treaty, the compromise, the harmony in relationships, who is looking at the values being promoted with any particular way of doing things, is less strong right now.
Democracies and autocracies both have Mars and Venus players, Mars and Venus moments, Mars and Venus systems. Though the idea of everyone having a voice is a much more Venusian sentiment than a Martian one. Mars is after efficiency, productivity, and chafes at having to sit in a meeting. He'd prefer action.
We are all individually a combination of both Mars and Venus energies as well. How we find the balance between these two very opposite styles inside ourselves is the lesson plan for March. How do we preserve others' agency while still getting things done? How do we not fall into aggression (Mars) or manipulation (Venus)? This month while Mars is being influenced by Pluto, we will tend toward not being concerned with how many casualties we incur as we meet our goals by any means necessary.
If abuses of power, robbing others of their voice, or intimidation were modeled in your family, in your schooling, or in your communities (including spiritual communities,) then you need to be more careful about your expression of Mars this month. Through Feb. and into early March, while Mars approached Pluto, his tendency for domination and violence will have been strong in all of us. If you came from a family system where these energies were at play, then the energy of Feb. and March may trigger painful traumas of being disempowered, not having a voice, being steamrolled, or equally as painful, acting out the role of aggressor. Many of us will have found ourselves hijacked by situations of domination and control. Collectively we see this in the situation the people of Russia and Ukraine find themselves in.
When Venus and Mars come together, there is nothing they can't accomplish. On the best of days, their creations are intense but also glorious, like a human birth. On the worst of days, (with the influence of Pluto,) their creations can feel volcanic – total destruction first, creation in the fertile lava fields that ensue, only much later.
Hope and inspiration coming from spirit-based sources
There's nothing like a crisis in getting us to turn to our faith. With what's happening in Ukraine, with the state of healthcare in the U.S. and health in general and the challenges there, with increasingly grim prospects in terms of climate crisis, (have you seen the latest IPCC Report?), it is good news indeed to have Jupiter approaching a conjunction to Neptune.
If nothing else, these two gas giants in alliance give our collective psyche a pressure release valve that allows us a way to escape the intensity of all the rapid change. But at its best, this pairing of planets opens a portal to transcendent communion with all of life. It is a real spiritual opportunity to discover authentic Hope, a hope that arises only after our faith has been tested.
More on this in next month's forecast when the conjunction becomes exact.
The turning of the karmic wheel: revisiting intergenerational karmas
For much of the month we are in an astrological configuration known as Kala Sarpa Yoga (with a reprieve from March 10-22.)
There is a strong argument for interpreting this particular astrological weather pattern as a collective, intergenerational trauma cycle. With their roots in the history of our ancestors, collective movements like war, racism, financial collapse/greed, will keep repeating until the trauma is presenced, assimilated, resolved. The events will keep getting bigger until a transformative intelligence grows big enough to meet our collective pain.
The question is whether we will destroy ourselves before this transformative intelligence can catch up. (And this is where that Jupiter Neptune conjunction comes in handy again – we are more apt, under their combined influence, to believe it's possible.)
Steamrolling the way forward
Felt more acutely later in the month, the planet Mars will be approaching a conjunction to the planet Saturn, (exact on April 5.) We will be executing whatever grand plans have been set in motion with precision, determination, focus, perseverance.
Where the early March Mars conjunction to Pluto is ruthless, the late March Mars approach to Saturn will be relentless. Take your adaptogens like ashwagandha. Your adrenals will need them this month.
What's an Agent of Evolution To Do?
The name of the game right now is Death and Rebirth. Let go of the old, in a manner as elegant as a Zen master's death poem. Or as chaotic as a drug overdose. Either way. We each play our role with as much style as we can muster.
Our evolution is inevitable.
